[Looking for the "sugar girl". Sexuality and partnership in the Journal "Der Diabetiker" (1951-1970)].

This paper examines discussions of intimacy and sexuality between diabetes mellitus patients and their physicians in West Germany after 1945 and considers their effect on the patient-physician relationship. As shown in the Journal Der Diabetiker, founded in 1951 as the organ of the Deutsche Diabetikerbund (German Diabetics Association), diabetic patients not only claimed acceptance of their own needs and attitudes but also, as early as 1956, brought the taboo subject of sexuality out into the open. By this means patients took issue with their physicians' traditional eugenic ideas still prevailing after 1945. With their initiative, which was soon embraced by diabetologists, they changed both the treatment and the therapeutic concepts of the disease itself. In terms of the theories of sociologist Richard Münch this account demonstrates the early democratization of medicine in West Germany within the permanent cycle of criticism and innovation.